Look Ma, no hands!
Wipefree August
Squeeze the Charmin all you want, you just can’t use it
With the success of Dry January, there are, inevitably, spinoffs.
I’m on board with Tootless Tuesday. Too many drivers lean on their horns just because they’re grumpy after a long commute of existential despair.
But that doesn’t matter. Because what you’re not supposed to toot on Tuesdays is inhaled through a rolled bill. You can still be an asshole and honk at the elderly when they drive at speeds asymptotically approaching reverse. Praise be.
How about Tax Holiday April? Not a spinoff, Tax Holiday April was actually started in the 30s by Al Capone, along with Gutshot Midnight. Celebrities like Willie Nelson, Martha Stewart, and even Lil Wayne have carried Capone’s torch ever since. Lil was in big. One admires the altruism of the rich and famous.
Me, I’m not a fan of this spinoff. Most of Tax Holiday April’s corporate officers are slinging hash at Misery Mountain. Prudence dictates biding my time until 2025, when President DeSantis furloughs the entire IRS, kicking off America’s celebration of Tax Holiday Century along with Post Hominid Epoch.
There’s even #NoFaptember. Let’s not touch it. Lest it become a habit.
But the one that’s roiling my bowels is Wipefree August. Because it concerns a ritual we humans perform daily, according to a socially accepted protocol. It is the most crucial element of said protocol that is to be wiped out in August. This is the new gold standard of cruel irony.
True, it’s not Soiled Hands August. We can still wash up after we rock a deuce. Just as people smoke after sex. A sentence needs a period.
One supposes this nod to manual hygiene reflects a commitment to public health. Though one might argue that the exception for hands is, at bottom, too little, too late, and too too.
Greta Thunberg leads the WipeFree August movement. So to speak. Why Wipefree? To cure our destructive addiction to toilet paper. You can get more deets on Wipefree’s website. Warning — it features YouTube demos that have induced PTSD in mysophobes.
I do get it. Our preoccupation with buffing our nethers after we “drop the kids off at the pool” translates to the annual deforestation of a wooded tract the size of Bolivia.
I’ll add a footnote for that as soon as I can find a website sloppy enough to support this claim. I tried asking ChatGPT to confirm it via Microsoft Bing, but I seem to be entrenched on the waiting list, several billion places behind not only Gates and Ballmer, but oddly even the late Paul Allen. Apparently my years driving a MacBook Pro have not built up cred with Satya Nadella.
You can thumb your nose at the IRS, but Greta Thunberg? An eco-hero. You get caught buying Cottonelle between July 4th and Labor Day, you might as well self-cancel. Because if there’s such a thing as vice signaling, that’s what you’re doing.
Being a software engineer, I know there is usually a workaround. In this case, it costs about $50, and if you can operate the valve to your toilet, you have all the plumbing knowledge you’ll need. For the hydro-challenged, here is the Bob Vila of toilet accessories walking you through it.
To simplify installation, I punted on the heated water upgrade. There is still a dent in my bathroom ceiling after I over-reacted to what felt like Arctic spume blasting a tunnel through my anus on my maiden voyage.
But one adapts.
Am I worried about recent rumors of a No H2O October?
Does a bear shit in the woods?
And if so, would our ursine friend feel compelled to opt in, lest they too be cancelled?
Thanks to Betsy Denson and Gary Chapin for Weekend Editing.
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